Down Home Kitchen

I need some more of your recipes……….please submit them as soon as possible so I can get them on the internet.  It’s your time to post your favorite recipes.  Today’s world, is looking for new and different ways of fixing food.  How can we do this if you don’t come up with new ideas for us ?  Try and see what you can do and give us new ideas for recipes.

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I found these growing after the big rains we had last week.    You can be sure these are not the eatable type.  They probably have all kinds of toxins, from growing out in my yard.    The driveway is about 4 feet away, next to them and as many cars that’s been worked on in the past 4 years, I’d say they are very toxic.  Hee, hee, better leave those alone.

It seems that I’ve gotten too lazy to cook good pastry’s anymore.  I use the easy way out and make what ever I absolutely have to.  I know my spouse loves good desserts and I should try to make him more of them than I do, but there’s only two of us and if I make it the way I’m used to, then there’s too much for us to eat and a lot left over.

I just use a cake mix and pre-made icing these days, to make him a cake.  I made him a German Chocolate cake a few months ago, and he ate like a pig.  It’s one of the cakes his deceased wife made for him when she was alive.  I know mine wasn’t as good as hers’ but that’s ok, because I’m not in competition, with her memory.

If I make a pie, I use already made crusts and pie filling if it’s fruit pies.  I do actually make the filling for my pecan pies, each year for the holidays.

The banana pudding is made with instant vanilla pudding/pie filling, bananas and vanilla wafers in layers.  It turns out great and everyone loves it.  Personally, I don’t like cooked pudding anyway.

How do you like your Shrimp? 

I’m ready for some “Peel & Eat Shrimp”, with “Crab Legs”. I don’t know how you like them, but I like to get all messy, when eating them. Seems to make it taste better. I place about 1 dozen raw/frozen med. Shrimp in a pot, cover with water. Make a bouquet of 1 tsp. oregano, 1 tsp. basil, 2 tsps. Crushed red pepper, dash garlic powder & paprika, and place in the pot, bring shrimp to a boil, reduce heat so foam won’t boil over, and boil 3 min. more, drain & reserve liquid. Place crab legs in same pot with reserved liquid, bring to boil & boil about 3 mins., drain. I like my shrimp & crab legs hot, but some people prefer them chilled. I serve them with cocktail sauce and warm lemon butter. So, have I made you hungry yet. Oh and I like to have fresh made creamy cole slaw and corn on the cob, with that too.

There are plenty of diet pills out there. I’ve used diet pills before and they hyped me up so much that I felt like I was gong to jump right out of my body. I wish there was an easier way to diet, than all the exercise you have to do in order to burn off the calories. It was as if my heart was racing and I had to move around or get the jitters. Coffee doesn’t bother me like those pills did.

I think that with all the different ingredients, that is put into the pills, your body has a hard time adjusting to them once their in your blood stream. I didn’t like the way they made me feel, but I did like the weight loss.

It was certain, that once I stopped taking the diet pills, the weight would slowly return. I never have been able to keep the fat off, by taking pills. I had to exercise and do it weekly to keep the problem under control.

Walking was the best form of exercise I could find and it was nice to get out on a cool day to walk. The hot days were grueling, and I lost too many body fluids. I felt like giving up and usually did. So, if these diet pills can help keep the weight off without a lot of exercise, they will do the job. 

Yum Yum……guacamole salad….I love it…… An avocado is a fruit and not a vegetable! It is actually a member of the berry family.
At the time of the Spanish conquest, avocados were grown from northern Mexico south through Central America into north-western South America and south in the Andean region as far as Peru (where the avocado had been introduced shortly before the conquest), as well as into the Andean region of Venezuela.

To freeze, mash the avocados with a fork. Add one teaspoon lime or lemon juice per avocado and mix well. The best way to freeze the prepared mashed avocados is to use a freeze-weight zip lock bag. Fill the bag with the mashed avocado. Remove the air from the bag and then zip closed and freeze.

Thaw the frozen avocados in the refrigerator or place the container in a bowl of cool water to accelerate thawing.
Its mono unsaturated fat speeds up the basal metabolic rate, as compared with saturated fat.
Its high fat content gives a quicker feeling of satiation (”fullness”), thus helping to reduce overeating.
Its high fat content makes an overall sound diet more palatable, reducing the temptation to binge on foods high in sugars or saturated fats.
Its rich supply of vitamins and minerals also makes the diet more wholesome and satisfying and thus more conducive to overall health.

For the last few months we’ve been wanting to try the new Jalapeno Tree Restaurant, that’s been recently built close to our home. As for a Tex-Mex restaurant, it can be ok, but as an original Mexican restaurant, I don’t buy it. We went in and the hostess’s took us to the smoking section, which was located in the Bar area. The bartender, became our waitress and was very busy tending the bar, so often we waited, until she could make it over to us.   We naturally got our drinks fast, once the order was made, but had to wait for her to come back and take the food order.

When the food arrived, I wasn’t very impressed with the look of the food. The guacamole salad needed more lime juice and seasonings and was very bland to the palate.  The taste of the food was even more bland and the hot chili sauce, that they brought as a condiment, had almost no pepper heat at all. I ate most of my food and so did my spouse, but both of us, mused that the food at On The Border, was much more flavorful and we would have rather gone there. We definitely decided that we won’t be going there again.
Unknown by me, it seems that my youngest daughter happen to visit the same restaurant the next day after we did, and on a visit to my home a few days later, she happen to mention going there. She had the same feeling as we did, that it wasn’t as good as one of the other Mexican restaurants, that we also like.

With the heat being so horrible these days, I find myself using the slow cooker, many times in one week. Today, I put 2 New York Strips in the cooker with a can of mushroom soup and later it will be nice and tender, and the gravy will have been used to season it.  I’ll probably make a salad to go with it, and there you’ll have a nice dinner, on a hot day.